Everything about Fire Whirl totally explained
A
fire whirl, colloquially
fire devil or
fire tornado, is a phenomenon in which a
fire, under certain conditions (depending on air
temperature and currents), acquires a vertical
vorticity and forms a whirl, or a
tornado-like effect of a vertically oriented rotating column of air. Fire whirls may be whirlwinds separated from the
flames, either within the burn area or outside it, or a
vortex of flame, itself.
A fire whirl can make fires more dangerous. An extreme example is the
1923 Great Kantō earthquake in Japan which ignited a large city-sized
firestorm and produced a gigantic fire whirl that killed 38,000 in fifteen minutes in the Hifukusho-Ato region of
Tokyo. Another example is the numerous large fire whirls (some tornadic) that developed after
lightning struck an oil storage facility near
San Luis Obispo, California on
April 7,
1926, several of which produced significant structural damage well away from the fire, killing two. Thousands of whirlwinds were produced by the four-day-long firestorm coincident with conditions that produced severe
thunderstorms, in which the larger fire whirls carried debris 5 kilometers (3 mi) away.
Most of the largest fire whirls are spawned from
wildfires. They form when a warm
updraft and convergence from the wildfire are present. They are usually 10-50
meters (30-200
ft) tall, a few meters (~10 ft) wide, and last only a few minutes. However, some can be more than a kilometer (0.6 mile) tall, contain
winds over 160 km/h (100 mph), and persist for more than 20 minutes.
These can also aid the 'spotting' ability of wildfires to propagate and start new fires.
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